Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/239

 mind then, and you wanted your affidavit to refresh your recollection?"

Witness. "No, it had not faded. I merely wanted to refresh my recollection."

Counsel. "Was it not rather that you had made up the story in your affidavit, and you wanted the affidavit to refresh your recollection as to the story you had manufactured?"

Witness. "No, sir; that is not true."

The purpose of these questions, and the use made of the answers upon the argument, is shown by the following extract from the summing up:—

"My point is this, gentlemen of the jury, and it is an unanswerable one in my judgment, Mr. District Attorney: If Minnock, fresh from the asylum, forgot this sheet incident when he went to sell his first newspaper article to the World; if he also forgot it when he went to the coroner two days afterward to make his second affidavit; if he still forgot it two weeks later when, at the inquest, he testified for two hours, without mentioning it, and only first recollected it when he was recalled two days afterward, then there is but one inference to be drawn, and that is, that he never saw it because he could not forget it if he had ever seen it! And the important feature is this: he was a newspaper reporter; he was there, as the district attorney says, 'to observe what was going on.' He says that he stood by in that part of the room, pretending to take away the dishes in